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Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Nov 22, 2021 03:46 PM UTC in reply to Max Koval from Sun Nov 21 02:15 AM:

As I can understand, you assume that my game seems to be too close to other existing variants, and maybe, it cannot be counted as a fully independent variant...

Ah, sorry, no, that was not my intended message. The board shape is enough IMO to warrant publication, since it limits the sort of "flanking" that rooks and queens gain in the hexagonally-shaped board of Glinsky/McCooey.

Let me try to clarify my intent. Hexagonal cells take some extrapolation from orthochess; the majority of variants (but not all!) agree on the basics (rooks and bishops, knights), and some (Glinsky!) differ on pawns, or sometimes kings. The next major splitting point is orientation (is forward an orthogonal direction or not), but again most variants agree on that. Within the large chunk of forward-oriented diagonal-attacking-pawns variants then, the only real differences are board size/shape, setup, pawn details (initial moves and promotion zone), and castling. So, I think it's nice to clarify quickly where a variant lives: this is one of those variants, not a "quirky" one with horizontally-oriented, or "weird" or "new" piece interpretations.

I'd like to point out that he was not first in creating the game that uses these rules, and I don't fully understand why his variant is mentioned instead of Shafran's version, which stands a little bit closer to my game

That's mostly a historical bias of this site I think: Glinsky's is probably the best-known, and McCooey's was introduced here, and so now the two Recognized/Primary links for the Hexagonal category are those. Perhaps we should add Shafran's game as a Recognized/Primary variant here in the hexagonal category?

I'll also mention that I'm not so familiar with hexagonal chess hierarchies and history, so I'm happy to be corrected on anything. Just to include them here, see also CECV chapter 22 and wikipedia.

Finally, I think the various claims like "the main difference is that my variant is actually playable" need some clarification. What is it about the different shape and setup that make this playable while all other hexagonal variants are not? At some point in your last comment you mention mismatched number of pawns and pieces, but that's hardly a disqualifier for me at least. Protected pawns, good and interesting openings, etc. would be more convincing to me. And yes, all that's subjective, but I think some discussion on the page (Notes section?) would be beneficial.


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